The Savage Critic: July 11, 2001 By Brian Hibbs

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.

Fuck me running, was this a huge fucking week for comics.... with too damn many goods ones too.

This is, of course, a solid sign that the San Diego con is right around the corner – EVERYONE releases EVERYTHING just when San Diego is coming along. Bastards.

Plus, I haven't even begun the first draft of the new order form, and I'm slightly stalling on the book AGAIN (I've reached the point where I actually don't know what's going to happen next, so my "thousand words a day" has dribbled down to like 300. All this for a manuscript which, if I'm lucky, will net me five grand. Yah, I'm a fucking ROCKET SCIENTIST), and ugh, I have to read all of these comics and tell you about them... and thanks all you people who sent me nice mail and shit, because without it, my head would have exploded, and I would have said, "fuck 'em all, my time is worth more" but, no, I don't ever LEARN, do I...?

Anyway, I’m a little behind, so I actually didn’t even finish reading all the comics this week – there’s far more stuff in the "didn’t read it" list than I am honestly comfortable list.... including stuff that I actually took home for my OWN collection. Deal with it.

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #594: Um, right, whatever. "Hey, the bad guy is a real bad ass because he beat Doomsday, and even Superman couldn’t beat him." There, you don’t need to read this. Competently done, but it still makes me feel cold and unloved. Awful.

AGENCY #1: Page after page of clichéd characters and situations, and yet I vaguely liked it anyway. Must be Kyle Hotz – I really like his work. Not good enough to recommend, but, still, this was the week’s first sell-out on the CE racks. OK.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #33: "I’ve never been hit so hard before!" Mm-hm. For 22 pages of just fight scenes, this was well done... but it is 22 pages of fight scenes. A few good lines, but nothing so special... but it illustrated the problems with a shared universe. Dig, you’re Peter Parker, you’re in Manhattan, you’re getting your ass kicked... are you going to run to the enigmatic and mysterious figure who has been jerking you around the last few weeks... or will you run to Avengers Mansion for help? I know where I’d go. Anyway, OK.

BAY CITY JIVE #3: Pretty crappy ending to what was an at-least-sorta-fun series. This probably would have been better if all of the plot wasn’t crammed into the last issue.... Eh.

DETECTIVE COMICS #760: I still don’t buy the whole bodyguard thing, but it was a decent read. The Slam Bradley story in the back worked a lot better this time through. OK.

FANTASTIC FOUR 2001: Kevin McGuire is a damn fine penciller. Story didn’t make much sense. Heh, just like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within – looks neat, thin plot. Eh.

HARLEY QUINN #10: The cover alone (a smiling redhead in the real batgirl costume) is almost worth it... but, 10 issues into the series, I still have no idea why this is being published. Eh.

HELLBOY CONQUEROR WORM #3: Excellent. ‘nuff said.

HELLSPAWN #9: Awful. Also ‘nuff said. Well, maybe not. I’ve decided now that McFarlane doesn’t deserve MY money with this abortion of a "Miracleman", so fuck it, Hellspawn is now subs-only at CE. That will show him!

HUNTER THE AGE OF MAGIC #1: ooh, much better than the mini... this actually shows a smidge of potential. Now, if only we can get Tim back into the "real" world, and out of fairyland, I might start enjoying this again. Good.

IRON MAN #44: Jesus, the new armor is ugly. Not a good comic, either. Awful.

JLA INCARNATIONS #3: OK. Y’know, all these years later, I can still quote from memory the Alan Moore Swamp Thing with the JLofA... " There is a house above the world where the over-people gather." Damn that was fine stuff.

LIBERTY MEADOWS #21: The boy can draw, and even manages a funny punch line or two, but 4-panels a day doesn’t lend itself that well to an ongoing story. OK.

LUCIFER #16: This had a VERY neat hook (Satan creates his OWN new universe, with his own Adam and Eve), and was very skillfully done. Very good.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #34: Backstage in comics retailing, Martian Manhunter was somehow shorted last week – in talking to DC, they didn’t know what happened either. I know you don’t care, but that’s why this is reviewed in THIS week’s pile. The Eduardo Baretto art seemed very rushed and sketchy, and the whole "J’onn takes on Apokolips while he was still on Mars" thing.... no, the premise just doesn’t work for me. Awful.

NEW X-MEN #115: Excellent. Picture perfect example of "mad pop thrill". On the other hand, being 3 weeks late on the second issue is a really really bad thing.

NIGHTWING #59: Eh. 12 hours later, and I can’t even remember what happened in this issue.

NIGHTWING OUR WORLDS AT WAR #1: Crap. Not only did this have virtually nothing to do with OWAW (that could be a plus), it was a stupid and disjointed time travel story with an implausible device leading it along. It seemed to me that the only POINT of this comic was "how to suck $2.95 from your pocket with the least effort"

PLANET OF THE APES HUMAN WAR #2: I figured out why this is rubbing me the wrong way – most of the apes just look like ugly humans. I saw the trailer, finally, and I wasn’t overly impressed... though it is 50 times better than the Spidey trailer. Anyway, big EH.

POWERS #12: Excellent. Funny, charming, and smart. Big leg up after the last ever-so so-so storyline.

PUNISHER #2: The best part about this is that it used to be practically a rule that Spider-Man would show up in the second issue of nearly every new Marvel comic – the thought was, I guess, that in order to get people coming back, they’d put the most popular character in #2. Really takes the piss out of the whole team-up thing, and I don’t think I’ll be able to read the upcoming Ultimate Team-Up Punisher/Spidey story without thinking about this. Only real flaw: Steve Dillon isn’t at all good at drawing Spidey. Looks wrong. Still, excellent and funny comic. "We’ve just had a team-up. You were great."

STAR TREK DIVIDED WE FALL #3: Eh. Not much more to say.

SWAMP THING #17: To quote Dave Sim for the last part of this story arc: "It was not so much a grand finale as a grand finally." Eh.

TOMB RAIDER #14: Yuck. So, an annoying character sacrifices himself. I’m only surprised it took so many issues. Awful.

TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN MAGAZINE #11: I don’t know why it’s listed under "comics" either... Diamond isn’t the best at proper categorization. The magazine content was adequate, and the comics bits were all one-pagers. I was not satisfied with the total package. Eh.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN #47: Good. I thought the confrontation at the end was implausible, at best, though.

UNCANNY X-MEN #396: OK. Still better than the average X-book over the last 10 years, but nothing to shout from the rooftops about. I looked at our cycle sheets for this... and the second issue (last month’s) went right back exactly to what X-Men was selling before the big relaunch. Doesn’t surprise me, but still, not an auspicious sign.

UNIVERSE X IRON MEN: Just a mess. The whole Universe X story has been "big ideas", but they’re presented so disjointedly... Awful.

US AGENT #2: Jerry Ordway can draw, but there’s not a single character here that I felt any connection to. Awful.

WARLANDS AGE OF ICE #1: Three in a row. Mish-mash of fantasy clichés, with murky art, and those annoying transparent word balloons. Awful.

X-TREME X-MEN #3: I can’t say anything worse than I’ve said on the first 2 issues, and this just continues the chain. Might be the last one I bother reading, because not only is this going nowhere, but it is going there very very slowly. Crap.

For Sake of Completeness, here’s a list of all of the OTHER comics that CE got in this week, that I did NOT read (and, therefore, am unlikely to review!). Note, that in most cases this is limited to 1) Manga, which I try to read as it is collected; 2) "Kids" comics like most of the Archies; 3) titles that were subs-only, either by design or accident; 4) Porno [oh, like you need me to REVIEW it!], and 5) Things that looked SO bad on the racks that I didn’t bother. Oh, and THIS week 6) Stuff that time limits mean I wasn’t able to get to yet. I’ll let you decide which is which.

AZRAEL AGENT OF THE BAT #80
BETTY & VERONICA #164
BLACK PANTHER #34
CRUX #4
DAREDEVIL #19
DARK ANGEL #25
DEE VEE 2001
DOUBLE TAKE #1
FANTASTIC FOUR THE FANTASTIC 4TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD
GLAM WARP
IMPULSE #76
INCAL #2
INU YASHA PART 6 #3
JUST A PILGRIM #5
LEGEND OF THE SAGE #1
MARTIAN SUCCESSOR NADESICO #24
MEPHISTO AND EMPTY BOX
MONSTER WORLD #3
NOCTURNALS DARK FOREVER #1
PEANUTBUTTER & JEREMY THE FLIBBLEDIBBLE FILE
PRINCESS PRINCE #9
RANDY ODONNELL IS THE MAN #2
RING OF NIBELUNG GOTTERDAMMERUNG #2
RISING STARS #1/2
SCOOBY-DOO #50
SHADES OF BLUE #2
SIGIL #14
SOJOURN #1
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #99
SPIDER-GIRL #36
TERRY MOORES PARADISE TOO #2
TIME TRAVELER AI #20

And, for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs, GNs, and magazines that CE got this week. I generally haven’t read any of this by the time I post these reviews. Though I generally attempt to give at least one recommendation amongst the TPBs each week, since I HAVE read the material at SOME point.

ANIMERICA EXTRA VOL 4 #8
BREAKFAST AFTER NOON TP
CLASSIC PINUPS 2002 WALL CALENDAR
DORK SHADOWS THE COLL DORK TOWER VOL 2 TP
FIFTH NAME GN
GREEN LANTERN ALAN SCOTT POWER RING PROP
HELLBOY FIGURE PVC SET
HOGANS ALLEY #9
HOW TO DRAW MANGA OCCULT & HORROR ENG ED
INVISIBLES TP #3 ENTROPY IN THE UK
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #32
MONKEYSUIT VOL 3 VIVA LA MONKEYSUIT
MR MONSTER HIS BOOKS OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE VOL ZERO TP
NEIL GAIMAN LIVE AT THE ALADDIN VIDEO
PISTOLWHIP GN
PROMETHEA BOOK TWO HC
PULP VOL 5 #8
SKETCH MAGAZINE #8
TOYFARE CROUCHING TIGER CVR #49
WIZARD ANIME INVASION AKIRA CVR
WOLVERINE BLOOD DEBT TP

This Week’s TPB recommendation is: Damn damn and more damn. I really want to give it to Breakfast After Noon... fine and fabulous piece of work. But the week Promethea Book 2 comes out... well, nothing can stand up to that. This reads SUPERBLY as a book (even if, yes, like v1, it stops in an awkward place). Promethea is revelatory, elegant, a formalist’s dream. It is SMART comics, and it is so elegantly crafted.... well, drop everything else, and go buy this. (Buy Breakfast Afternoon too, though)

Average Rating for the Week: 3.45 (of 7.00) – four excellents this week, BTW

Pick of the Week: Powers #12. A fine book in a fine week.

Pick of the Weak: X-Treme X-Men is the obvious choice, but it keeps "winning" over and over again. So, let’s give it to Nightwing: Our Worlds at War just to change things up. Bad bad comics!